Global provider of AI hardware acceleration technology, Axelera AI, has successfully closed a $68 million Series B funding round, bringing its total capital raised to $120 million. This significant achievement would mark Europe’s largest oversubscribed Series B funding in the fabless semiconductor industry.
The fresh capital injection aims to power the global adoption of Axelera AI’s Metis AI Processing Unit (AIPU), hailed as the world’s most powerful AIPU for edge devices, designed to drive next-generation AI inference solutions for computer vision and generative AI.
The Series B funding round attracted a diverse array of investors, including Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund, the European Innovation Council Fund, Innovation Industries Strategic Partners Fund, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. Existing investors such as Verve Ventures, Innovation Industries, and CDP Venture Capital SGR also participated. This funding boost would underscore Axelera AI’s impressive growth trajectory and the strong market demand for its innovative solutions.
In just three years, Axelera AI has assembled a team of over 180 employees, including more than 55 PhD holders with extensive academic citations. According to the company itself, Axelera AI’s flagship Metis AI Platform has demonstrated a 3-5x increase in efficiency and performance, validating Axelera AI’s leadership in the AI hardware space. The company now boasts a business pipeline exceeding $100 million, reflecting robust customer demand and a solid position in the AI industry.
Automotive, Digital Healthcare, Industry 4.0, Robotics
Axelera AI’s strategic growth plan includes expanding its market presence across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. The Series B funding would support the company’s entry into new verticals such as automotive, digital healthcare, Industry 4.0, retail, robotics, drones, and surveillance. Additionally, the capital would enable Axelera AI to extend its product offerings from edge computing to data centers, addressing the increasing computing needs for generative AI, large language models, and multi-modal models. This expansion strategy also involves designing high-efficiency, high-performance, and cost-competitive AI accelerators for future exa-scale and peta-scale high-performance computing (HPC) centers.
Fabrizio Del Maffeo, Co-Founder and CEO of Axelera AI, highlighted the transformative potential of AI across various sectors. “To truly harness the value of AI, organizations need a solution that delivers high-performance and efficiency while balancing cost. This funding supports our mission to democratize access to artificial intelligence, from the edge to the cloud. By expanding our product lines beyond the edge computing market, we are able to address industry challenges in AI inference and support current and future AI processing needs with our scalable, proven technology.”
AI Applications at the Edge
Industry forecasts from IDC indicate that IT infrastructure for AI semiconductors will reach $193 billion by 2027. Axelera AI aims to meet this growing demand with its Metis AI Platform, a “powerful, cost-effective, and energy-efficient” AI processing unit for inference, slated for full production in the second half of 2024.
Marco Chisari, Head of Samsung Semiconductor Innovation Center and Executive Vice President at Samsung Electronics, expressed excitement about supporting Axelera AI. “Axelera AI introduces a very innovative approach for high-performance AI acceleration at the edge by implementing Digital In-Memory Computing. The architecture minimizes data movement between memory and compute elements, aiming to overcome the ‘Memory Wall’ challenge and significantly reduce power consumption, which is critical for AI applications at the edge and beyond,” Chisari commented.
Inder Singh, an Axelera AI board member and former CFO of Arm, emphasized the strategic significance of the funding. “Axelera AI’s Series B funding round, backed by venture capital, sovereign, and pension funds, underscores the company’s record of delivering industry-defining solutions to meet the growing demand for generative AI and computer vision. With this new funding, Axelera AI will continue to build upon its product offerings and expand into additional markets, aligning with the market’s progression for GenAI.”
The combination of Axelera AI’s experienced Board of Directors, the executive leadership team, and the Series B investment would position the company to capitalize on early customer momentum and support AI innovators across various vertical markets. Axelera AI customers are already leveraging the Metis AI Platform to enhance their product offerings, underscoring the platform’s potential to revolutionize the AI industry.
